A retired LAPD officer, who spent nearly thirty years on the force and two investigating the shooting death of rapper Notorious B.I.G. (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls), took the stand in the rapper's family trial against the LAPD yesterday. The former officer, Fred Miller, said that a cellmate of B.I.G. rival and Death Row label head Marion "Suge" Knight informed him that Knight had confessed to the murder.

"He told me he had spoken with an individual named Suge Knight and that Knight told him that he had had Biggie Smalls murdered," Miller stated, according to reports. Miller maintained that he had confirmed part of Knight cellmate Mario H'ammond's information, and that it had proved to be "very good."

Spurred on by H'ammond, a search warrant affidavit was filed, released this week by B.I.G.'s family. "That fat bitch took it like a bitch," the affidavit claims Knight told H'ammond. "Rolled up on his ass and smoked his fat ass. I got the fat ass. My people took care of it."

Along with producer Sean "Puffy" Combs (now "P. Diddy") and his Bad Boy label, Brooklyn native B.I.G. recorded his debut, 1994's Ready to Die, and 1997's Life After Death (released weeks after his death), both hit-packed hip-hop milestones. He was killed when shots were fired into his car on a Los Angeles road shortly after midnight on March 9, 1997.

On Wednesday, the opening day of the trial, a former bodyguard for rapper Tupac Shakur, Kevin Hackie, stated that he had seen LAPD officer David Mack at several Death Row events, occasionally in conversation with Knight. The family of B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace, claims that a number of LAPD officers had relationships with gang members and sometimes provided security for Death Row.

Hackie, who was an FBI informant during the three years in which he worked for Tupac, also stated that the head of Death Row security, Reginald Wright, had wanted to avenge the 1996 Las Vegas slaying of Tupac, which he believed B.I.G. had masterminded. "We were going to get those [people] who downed 'Pac: Biggie and his crew," Hackie testified, according to reports.